The 2-D structure of dusty disks around Herbig Ae/Be stars

I. Models with grey opacities

a paper by C.P. Dullemond A&A 395, 853-862 (2002)

The structure of protoplanetary disks around Herbig Ae/Be stars is still not fully clarified. In contrast to disks around low luminosity stars such as T Tauri stars, these disks have dusty free central regions as a result of dust evaporation. The presence of this "gap" has profound consequences for the spectral energy distribution and the structure of these disks. The paper described on this web page deals with these issues. It can be downloaded here [postscript file]. A series of fully self-consistent 2-D models of such disks is presented. These models were calculated using a 2-D radiative transfer program called RADICAL. I found that for high optical depth the disk assumes a flaring shape with a hot and puffed up inner edge. This structure was predicted already in a earlier papers by Natta et al. (2001) A&A 371, 186 and by Dullemond, Dominik & Natta (2001) ApJ 560, 957. In addition to these solutions, I also found solutions that were fully self-shadowed, or disks that are flaring up to a certain radius and become self-shadowed beyond it. I argue that these self-shadowed disks might be the explanation for the class of Herbig Ae sources that have a strong near IR but a weak far infrared flux (group II sources in the terminology of Meeus et al. (2001) A&A 365, 476).

Temperature (contours) and density (grey-scale) structure for a flarig disk with inner radius at dust evaporation radius.

Same as left, but now for a disk that is not massive enough to flare: a fully self-shadowed disk.

You can also download a movie showing the disk in 3-D (2 Megabytes).

For a detailed explanation of the above figures and more about the disk models, please download the paper [postscript file]. Or download the paper from astro-ph/xxxxx.

Downloading the models

Here you can find the model data files corresponding to the 4 models worked out in the paper.

NOTE:

The density is in g/cm^3, but should not be regarded as a realistic density from which the disk mass can be determined. This is because the opacity is taken to be kappa=1 at all wavelengths, which is rather arbitrary. In part II of this paper (in progress) more realistic grain opacities will be used.

NOTE:

The model data are freely available. But use of the data for scientific publications is only allowed when our paper is properly referenced. If you plan to use the data for any kind of scientific purpose, we would be very glad if you send us a short email, so that we can keep track of who is using our model, and who to update in case of modifications and/or bugfixes.

Download model 1 of the paper

Download model 2 of the paper

Download model 3 of the paper

Download model 4 of the paper

---> All models in a .tar.gz archive <---

The computer code for computing these models is not publically available, as it is rather complex to use. But if you are interested in using this code, you are welcome to contact me, or first have a look at the web page of RADICAL.

dullemon@mpa-garching.mpg.de